This weekend I was unable to completely disconnect myself to technology, though this assignment definitely made me think twice about using my devices. I did try and not use social media sites; I did not post anything on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, which on halloween weekend proved to be very difficult.
I noticed couple of things I really found to be interesting when trying to disconnect from my cell phone. I never really noticed how convenient it is to have a nice camera built into my phone. I am very into taking pictures with my friends, because I like to "make memories." At least that's what I tell my friends when I get the "ugh not another picture." Without being able to use my phone I became 10x more annoying, because it was no longer "let's take a picture!" It became, "Let's take a picture… on your phone and send it to me!" That I found to be interesting, because I never thought about that aspect of my phone being that important.
Another thing that I noticed was the amount of times I had the urge to send something stupid and funny to my friends from high school. We have a group message that we text in quite a bit, and without that connection I felt a little weird. With that, I did have to use my phone in order to keep in touch with my room mates. If someone doesn't respond in our group chat quickly enough we tend to freak out a little bit. I thought it was very interesting to realize how crazy it is that we are almost in constant contact.
Finally, not being able to use email would have been bad for me had I actually participated in that part. I am the communications chair for a student organization on campus, and through that I get a lot of emails with questions about events that I really need to respond to. As I tried to not check my email for a day and a half, I looked and I had 40 emails; then I cracked and began responding.
Overall this experience was eye-opening. I feel lucky to live in a time where technology is so important in our lives, because I think it is an awesome tool in promoting connectivity. I love that I am able to constantly stay connected to my friends and family, and to be honest it is crazy to me that this is something that people born even just ten years before me didn't have.
2 comments:
That's exactly how it was for me with having a camera on my phone! Phones make it so convenient to always have a camera on you. It was especially hard not to use the camera because of Halloween weekend! I made other people use their phones to take the pictures as well!
I have the same situation as well! Instead of asking my friend to take a picture of me, I just went into every picture my friends were taking, which wasn't so annoying because everyone was doing that!
I also agree that we are very lucky to be able to use all these technologies to stay connected, especially me being an international student. I really couldn't imagine keeping contact through oversea mails.
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